Monthly Archives: September 2015

Inband tower is up!

This weekend was a great weekend. First off I managed to get the inband tower ready to be put up on Friday and Saturday evening by pulling a few more cables through it and carrying out all hardware so it would be fast and easy when the crane arrived. On Saturday SM3DMP, SM3CER, SM3BDZ, SM3PXO and SM3PXO son SA3BXA arrived. They had been talking about visiting for years but now they did so and we had a real blast. It was fun to listen to all stories about how they started out in the hobby etc. SM3PXO, SM3DMP, SA3BXA also helped out with putting up the tower when GTL-Tobbe came by with the crane on Saturday afternoon. It went rather smoothly and the tower was up quickly. It turned out great and hopefully when I get the worm drive attached to the bottom I can try to see it rotates well as well.

SM3PXO, SM3BDZ also gave me a couple of tubes. One that is a spare for an amp and one that will be used in the QBL amplifier and SM3DMP + SM3CER brought me a bunch of lottery tickets but unfortunately I did not get rich this time but it was a great gesture 🙂

SM3BDZ and SM3PXO were the brains and muscles behind a M/M station that was quite active in the late 90s and early 2000, SL3ZV/SK3JR (Also SL3A/SK3A). Unfortunately not enough people were involved in the station and when the rent got too high at the place they had to take down all equipment and leave for another QTH but with plans of a much smaller station, a more normal size club station.

The list of visiting hams this year is becoming very long, very fun!

Now I will try to put down a lot of effort in getting some antennas up in that inband tower too, so we might be able to use it during the contest season. But it is very unsure since winter might strike any time since it is almost October.

WAE, SAC CW

SM2LIY has been active in a few contests but I guess the only real serious effort was SAC CW last weekend. However propagation’s in all of these three events have been very poor, what a difference from what we have experienced before where most of the contests have been pretty good.

                   WAE DX Contest, CW

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): SM2LIY
Station: SJ2W

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 24

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  QTCs  Mults
-------------------------
   80:   35    20    92
   40:  210   285   180
   20:  453   903   174
   15:  224   226   142
   10:   23    12    32
-------------------------
Total:  945  1446   620  Total Score = 1,482,420

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

Part time operation, we had forrest work this weekend to get rid of some trees
to make place for a new tower for inband operation.
Conditions was not the best, bad during day on 15 and especially bad on 10m on
saturday. Got beaten by 100 watters with small antennas on 15m calling the DX.
MUF even too low to call UA9 on 15m, had to beam to central EU and work them on
scatter. Same with NA during day, pointed to PY for QSOs. Many stations worked
at s1-s2 level.
Thats life under the oval at 64N when ms Aurora is visiting.

Antennas
80m: 4-SQ 
40m: 3/3el + 2/2el + 4-SQ 
20m: 6/6/6el + 5/5el + 4el @EU 
15m: 6/6/6/6/6el + 6/6el + 5el 
10m: 6/6el + 6el @46m 
K3 + ACOM 2000A (Sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB) 
Micro KEYER 2R openASC N1MM Logger 

Thanks to all callers, and also to those giving out QTCs.

73 Per SM2LIY
                    WAE DX Contest, SSB

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): SM2LIY
Station: SJ2W

Class: Single Op HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 36

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  QTCs  Mults
-------------------------
   80:   39     1   100
   40:  137   188   177
   20:  382   623   174
   15:  166   363   140
   10:    1     0     2
-------------------------
Total:  725  1175   593  Total Score = 1,126,700

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

Ms Aurora was visiting again.

7Z1SJ 5-bander, the only station heard all weekend on 10m.

80m: 4-SQ 
40m: 3/3el + 2/2el + 4-SQ 
20m: 6/6/6el + 5/5el + 4el @EU 
15m: 6/6/6/6/6el + 6/6el + 5el 
10m: 6/6el + 6el @46m 
K3 + ACOM 2000A (Sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB) 
Micro KEYER 2R openASC N1MM Logger 

Thanks to all callers, and also to those giving out QTCs.
CU in SAC CW next weekend!
 
73 Per SM2LIY
                    Scandinavian Activity Contest, CW

Call: SJ2W
Operator(s): SM2LIY
Station: SJ2W

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: Da Traesk
Operating Time (hrs): 24
Radios: SO2R

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
   80:  287    44
   40:  609    59
   20:  747    58
   15:  155    42
   10:   30    19
-------------------
Total: 1828   222  Total Score = 913,086

Club: Worldwide Young Contesters

Comments:

Looks like SC24 is giving up, more mults worked on 80m than on 15m, despite of
big stacks on 15m. Got 2 USA in log on 15m during the night on a short Aurora
opening. 7 JA worked on 15m. K-index swinging between 5 and 7 from sunday 03z
to the end.
Had some problems with N1MM+ and dual CQ, audio moved to other rx before i had
typed the whole call, often missed last letter, so had to put in longer CQs
than needed  to fix that problem. Also was some focus problem writing the call,
often last 2 letters in the call appeared in wrong order.

Thanks to all callers and to all who tried to move to other bands, also thanks
to Mike serving some very needed coffee.

80m: 4-SQ 
40m: 3/3el + 2/2el + 4-SQ 
20m: 6/6/6el + 5/5el + 4el @EU 
15m: 6/6/6/6/6el + 6/6el  
10m: 6/6el + 6el @46m 
K3 + ACOM 2000A (Sponsored by Ojojoj Music AB) 
TS590 + 4-1000 micro KEYER 2R openASC N1MM Logger+

Inband tower ready to be hoisted!

I arrived at SJ2W on Friday mid day and started with settings up the station for SM2LIY who arrived a bit later, since he was going to run the SAC CW contest. It all went very smoothly, the station is extremely easy to setup for contests now. Only thing that is missing is one or two more amplifiers so I don’t need to borrow for contests. The 5el for 15m has got some issue, I believe its probably the coax since I discovered a damage on one of the pieces of 7/8″. But I figured that SM2LIY could probably manage with the other 42 elements on that band 🙂

I spent most of the weekend preparing the last stuff on the inband tower so it could be lifted next weekend. I fixed the guy wires, added two cables I got from SM2EKM, attached the guy wire ring and the small 1.8m long top section. Now the tower is ready to be lifted and hopefully it will be done on Saturday. I will try to add another coax for an 80m dipole and also a power cable for the 868 MHz link that will be used to control the inband location.

GTL rock once again!

Lots of progress lately, which included getting parts for the guy wire rings to the inband tower, helping SM2EKM taking down a beam, SM2XJP going to get parts galvanized and a bunch of work on the antennas and inband tower. Thanks to SA2CHQ that we got to borrow his trailer to transport the 10m long sections from my place to the inband location. We also got to borrow the L11 Ljungy wheel loader from GTL and got to keep it during the weekend!